As we saw in my first blog in this series, parentification is generally split into 2 modes: emotional parentification and instrumental parentification.  It is not unusual even when a child is primarily in one mode that there are inherently associated outcomes in the other mode too.  However, sometimes, a child can be induced into being parentified at both the emotional and instrumental levels at the same time. Particularly, if there is a strong co-dependency due to the physical caring needs for one or both parents.

For the purpose of exploring the issues caused by being parentified as a child, I have created two fictional scenarios which offer different insights into the effects parentification can have on an adult’s life. They do not relate to any specific individuals, they are merely a vehicle to explore the harmful effects of growing up in a dysfunctional home environment and the harmful effects of parentification.

In this first scenario, we are going to look at Sally.  When Sally is 11, her parents split up.  Prior to the actual physical separation of her parents Sally has noticed that her mum is withdrawn but also short tempered and prone to angry outbursts over what used to be normal family dynamics, like not getting ready for school on time or leaving dishes in the sink.  Sally knows it is something to do with what her dad has done but neither parent is communicating with her, and she feels isolated emotionally during this period.  After a few weeks of this dysfunctional and unhappy home environment, Sally’s dad does not return home and she is told by her mum that they cannot live together anymore: Sally’s dad has left them.

Despite trying over a few days, Sally cannot get anything more from her mum about what has happened and if her dad will return. Although Sally doesn’t know it at the time, it means there will be no ongoing financial support for them from now on. 

Sally the Housekeeper

Sally’s mum withdraws even further emotionally and almost completely stops running the day-to-day household.  Sally must start preparing food for herself and sometimes her mum when Sally can convince her to eat.  Over the next few weeks, Sally takes care of her mother in the hope she will start to re-engage with her responsibilities and begin taking care of herself and Sally again. Although her mum becomes more present in their home again, she refuses to take control of their lives and acts like she is helpless, that she has no agency of her own to direct their lives and take responsibility for Sally’s own well-being.  Sally's own psychological and emotional needs go ignored and unattended.

Throughout Sally’s teenage years, her role as the parent in the home only increases as she takes onboard the emotional and physical load of being the family’s sole parent, and of being a mother to her mother.  Sally provides all the practical support (instrumental parentification) of organising daily life in the home, around her schooling, as well as bringing in additional family income through a part time, Saturday, job.

When Sally turns 16, her mum is diagnosed with severe lupus and will remain chronically ill for the rest of her life. 

Sally now becomes her mum’s full-time carer too.

Sally is Super Mum

At an age where Sally should be working out her own identity and building relationships with her peers she is at home with a fully dependent parent.  Her mother’s needs are so demanding that they crowd out any room for her to contemplate her own emotional needs and to seek guidance and advice about her own life choices from her mum or absent father. 

Sally cannot think about her future, she cannot even imagine the things she could be or might like to do as she is simultaneously the family breadwinner, her mum’s mum and her mum’s dedicated carer. 

Sally has become a parentified child.

Sally, Overworked and Unloved

Rather than appreciating just what Sally is going through, offering her unconditional love and recognising her commitment to caring for her both physically and emotionally her mother is consistently unforgiving and callous towards Sally.  No matter how well Sally completes a task for her mother she is constantly berated for failing to do things satisfactorily and is told that she ‘doesn’t care’ enough about her and that if she ‘really loved her’ she would try harder.

Sally has forgotten her own identity.  Emotionally, Sally no longer exists.

Sally’s whole focus now is to try and make her mother happy and to avoid disappointing her in the future.

The World Without Sally

At this point, Sally’s life is totally disconnected from her teenage peers.  She is no longer invited to events or friend’s houses as she must always be present to care for her mother.  As time goes on, she feels unworthy of building these friendships anyway as she feels she has nothing in common with her peers and has nothing to offer them either.  Sally believes herself to be uninteresting and begins to think that she doesn’t deserve such relationships in her life anyway.  She thinks she has nothing in common with anyone and she would be lucky to find someone to be friends with, never mind have anyone fall in love with her.

Given the disadvantages in her life, Sally still manages to get accepted into a nearby university.  Unlike other students, she can’t move out of home and go to university as she feels she still needs to live at home whilst studying. Sally uses her student loan to help keep the household running.

She tries hard to make friends, to engage and assimilate into an independent lifestyle but struggles to build relationships, particularly, close relationships where she should receive as much emotional and physical support as she herself gives out to others.  She finds it hard to keep friends and has spent so long suppressing her own agency to provide emotional and physical support for her mother, she doesn’t really know who she is anymore and how to identify as her own person in the world beyond her.

A Day in The Life of Sally

Sally goes through university and then leaves home to begin her career.   She is diligent and hard working and always striving to please those around her.  Although her manager thinks she is performing at work to a high standard, Sally herself feels disappointed with her own performance.

She is constantly, subconsciously, falling into caretaking roles with her friends and work colleagues. 

Sally does not have any concept of ‘pacing’ herself emotionally with people as she is so conditioned to give her all, she comes across as too intense and is thought to be poor at understanding not just her own boundaries but other people’s too.

Sally is terrified of being rejected and, therefore, desperate to please.  She never puts herself first at work, home or with friends in social arrangements.

This means that she is often found easily by people that will exploit these traits in her nature.

At this point in her life, we can sum up Sally’s psychological and emotional state as follows:

·         Low self-worth

·         Anxious – worries about failing people or being rejected

·         Has little to no self-belief in herself

·         She cannot set appropriate personal or emotional boundaries – leads to being manipulated or rejected

·         She is always trying to heal/fix people that are struggling – so attracts people that will exploit this factor

·         Feels lonely and isolated a lot of the time – consequently, fears being unwanted and without a partner

 

With these traits, Sally’s deep conditioning to care, to be caring, make her vulnerable to meeting the wrong type of people.  People that will abuse her emotionally and that will very often want to control her.  She is so fearful of being rejected that she cannot initiate appropriate emotional boundaries in her relationships with men and finds herself in relationships where she is controlled and punished for minor indiscretions and everyday mistakes.  

The people Sally thinks of as friends have told her they think she is reckless, particularly, when she is socialising with new people and bringing new friends into her life.  Her friendships and relationships often end in her being exploited or pushed away, or both. This cycle continues and the outcomes are repeated over and over in Sally’s life. 

Helping Sally Recover Her Identity and Take Control of Her Life

From my experience helping people like Sally at Omega Counselling, I know that the hardest step is often the first, and that is seeking out professional counselling, of taking direct action and beginning the process of healing and recovering your own identity and mental wellbeing.

Breaking the Cycle – Talking Therapy

In Sally’s case, I would encourage her to discuss her past and help identify the key events and people in her life that will have shaped her identity.  This is a normal process in ‘talking therapy’ counselling and is something we specialise in at Omega Counselling.

However, with parentification, it is primarily about the dysfunctional home environment and the absence of having good, caring, and loving parents in a child’s formative years.

A significant part of the process would be to address the triggers, events and type of people that drive Sally’s behaviours.

Such as her:

·         Caretaking roles (rescuer role) – she is attracted to people that ‘need’, or that she believes need looking after in some way.

·         Trying too hard to please (do it all role)– not accepting that she can’t make everyone happy or pleased, she doesn’t have all the answers, this leads to bad decision making.

·         Inability to set boundaries – for fear of rejection she is unwilling to instigate safe emotional and physical boundaries that will serve her needs/identity.

·         Reckless social behaviour – driven by low self-worth, Sally doesn’t respect herself which leads to substance abuse.

·         No self-belief – she needs others to affirm she is making the right or good decisions about herself and her life choices.

 

Sally’s way out of this damaging cycle is to begin recognising that this is not her own identity making her behave this way but one created in response to her parentification by her mother. 

With counselling, Sally will be encouraged to find her real self, the one she has had to suppress as a result of her relationship with her mother.

I would counsel Sally to recognise that she is not attracted to happy and well-adjusted people as they are not in need of her ‘help’ or her self-sacrifice.  There would be no need for her to suppress her identity to serve others and so she avoids making what could be healthier friendships, ones where she might also receive emotional support in her direction.  

Through ‘talking therapy’ Sally will learn that it is important to have positive and well-adjusted people in her life. That she does not have to, and should not always, suppress her identity to serve the emotional needs of others.

She will learn that it is okay to fail sometimes and that she can’t possibly make everyone happy so she must learn to make choices for herself, to make choices that nourish her real self and support her own well-being and psychological development.

Through this process of reinstating her needs and recognising the emotional and psychological behaviours that support her real identity, step by step, Sally will be able to promote her own self-belief and self-worth.  As a result, Sally should begin making decisions that are better for her, decisions that support her personal growth and allow her to attract people that respect her for who she is and who she wants to be.

This is a process though; it won’t happen overnight.  In fact, it takes practice, commitment and I would argue courage to overcome a lifetime’s worth of conditioning and the building of negative and self-destructive behaviours like Sally has.

This is why we say in counselling, there is no time limit or perfect number of sessions, there is only a process of discovery and recovery and how long this process takes is completely down to each individual we are helping.

If you would like to learn a little more about Talking Therapy and when it may be helpful to you, then you can read more about it here on the NHS website.

 

Omega Counselling – We are Here to Help

If you have been affected by reading this counselling scenario or it has triggered upsetting memories for you then I would encourage you to seek out medical help or find a counsellor that works for you.

If you want help from Omega Counselling, then we hold clinics in Manchester, Wigan, Chorley and Bolton, so we are easily accessible from most places in Lancashire.  

We do offer video conferencing for people that do not wish to attend in person too.

If you want to take control of your mental wellbeing and lead a more confident, positive and happier life then please get in touch with us and see if we can help you.  Your first consultation is free.